How the Healing Energy of Bali Saved My Life

“Nicola’s extraordinary recovery was one of the many powerful Balinese healing experiences that eventually inspired the making of Fivelements”Chicco Tatriele, Co-founder, Fivelements

Nicola Martinengo, originally from Milan, has been a close friend of Chicco’s since the early 80s. He and a group of friends would visit Bali, and Chicco, every August. One year Nicola had a near-fatal motorbike accident, and the local healer who saved him changed his life forever.

Nicola tells his extraordinary story of Balinese healing…

I always loved Bali for its feeling of total freedom and the strong spiritual influence it had. It was a good place to heal my soul. This story happened my tenth summer there, and I loved the island even more afterwards.

I was in an accident with another motorbike. I fainted when it happened and floated up, seeing myself and the accident from above. The girl who had crashed into me looked like she had broken her arm and waist. When I came to I was in a trance and started walking into a rice field, unaware that I had broken bones. A policeman found me in a farmhouse where I was bleeding to death with an old Balinese woman crying over me. He put me in a cab and sent me to the ER.

My collarbones were both broken, I had hit my head badly (I wasn’t wearing a helmet), I had cracked ribs and a huge cut in my foot. I was horrified at my condition. At the hospital I had to fight to get ice for my head, which I was told I had to pay for, but I couldn’t even get my money out of my pocket I was in so much pain. They x-rayed my collarbones and gave me 17 stiches to my foot with no anesthetic.

When Chicco arrived a doctor told us I must have an urgent operation on one of my collarbones, which was planned for the next morning at 11am. That night, while on morphine, I managed to sleep but dreamed of my grandmother who urgently warned me not to have the operation. I was terrified. The next morning Chicco returned, saying his friend Made had telepathically heard from his uncle, a renowned Balinese healer and bonesetter from Ubud, that I would die on the operating table if I went ahead with the operation.

Chicco and another friend, Carlo, helped me escape from the hospital down the fire escape stairs, taking me to Chicco’s house. I was in so much pain I could hardly breathe. I spent the night on painkillers and the next day Made’s uncle arrived to help me.

I stood in front of Made’s Uncle. He had the most incredible green-blue eyes I had ever seen. He entered my soul with his eyes. I could feel his power. He told me to over ventilate and started putting herbs on my bones. His eyes changed from brown to blue and suddenly the room was full of wind, it was incredibly frightening.

His trance affected us all. I saw spirits dancing in my body and his hands went into my body operating on my bones. He fixed my ribs, hand and foot with just one movement, and then addressed the blood coming out of my left side.

He came to Chicco’s house once a day for five more days after that. Each day I also had Rachel performing crystal therapy, Jane helping with flower therapy, Barbara with more crystal therapy and Chicco helped heal me with oxygen with a natural breathing technique. He also took me to see Awahoshi, the guru of crystal sound therapy, who took us into the forest to heal us.

Six days after my accident I was swimming in the pool.

Twelve days after my accident I was in Milan, at a bone specialist. Usually it takes 40 days to heal a collarbone but for me, six days. He looked at the x-rays, he examined my bones and he couldn’t believe it. He was shouting at me, saying it was a miracle. I told him it was the power of alternative healing.

Made’s uncle didn’t do any healing on my foot as the hospital had stitched it up and bandaged it. It took a month to heal.

Before my accident, I knew I was slipping into a difficult life. I was going through a difficult time, I was angry, stressed, full of hate. Afterwards I became peaceful, strong and successful. I’m blessed. I know I could easily have died. Bali teaches you things that cannot be explained.

I am so grateful to my healers. I love them even if they don’t realise how much. They didn’t experience what I experienced, perhaps they have no idea how powerful they are. But they are my angels.

When my daughter is independent, in about 15 years, I will probably move to Bali and melt into the island. I have had an incredible life already, but by then I will be 60 and I want to live my days out there, in the land of peace.